Young America, Minnesota

Somewhere in Minnesota (in fact, quite likely here) there is a place called Young America. While it is only about yae big, it spans zip codes from xxx50 to xxx60 inclusive. Much like phones in movieland, zip codes in Young-America-land start in 5s... This wouldn't be so sinister, you know, a town of 3,108 people taking up 11 zip codes, including 55555, if it weren't for the fact that all the world's rebate forms go there. (In contrast, my former hometown of El Monte is the 191st largest city in the USA with a population of 115,965 and has only has 2 zip codes.) Well, maybe 95%. All five of the five that I sent out after my post-Thanksgiving shopping went there. I've sent so many UPC codes there that I remembered that I had sent many UPC codes there, so therefore I must have sent many of them!

Yes, sounds sneaky doesn't it? I bet many of those 3,108 people spend all day long opening envelopes and scanning barcodes (how else would you know I sent you the UPC from my new purchase and not from a box of cereal... unless of course I had a rebate for a box of cereal...). Yes, until I meet someone from there, that is what I shall choose to believe. Who's with me?

Received Cutting Edge Documentation packet

I got this in the mail yesterday. It's actually pretty good and I plan to go over it in more detail later and see about integrating it into my normal documentation habits. More on that later if I do. =)

Still eagerly awaiting death certificate and social security application I sent off for almost a month ago.

Sea World, again

Charles and I went to Sea World again yesterday. We finished seeing almost everything now, except we didn't go on the 2 rides because we didn't want to get wet and we didn't see one of the aquariums. Figured we should go now, since our passes are good until the end of the year. It'll most likely be our last theme park trip or vacation until after SCALE in February. Well, except for Christmas at Disneyland. =) It's cool living in southern California!

A funny thing happened this year on the way to Thanksgiving...

You know how little kids sometimes think that their parents can do things that they can't, like they have magic powers? Well, I think some of them do. For example, my mom has the ability to cancel national holidays. As of Tuesday, Thanksgiving was canceled due to impending drama. (Either my mom was sick, or she was worried over who was going to show up and who wasn't, or she didn't want to make ham just to "appease" certain people... I heard several reasons. I think that second option was most likely, the last one seems unlikely because when have we ever had anything other than ham? I doubt she wanted to make tamales while sick.) She also put a tentative cancellation order on Christmas, saying "we'll see" if we get together.

My sister passed along our un-invitation to lunch on Tuesday. (We do lunch partially as a concession so that Charles and I can attend Thanksgiving with both of our families. We've always ended up eating early even if we were supposed to have "dinner," so pushing it an hour or two earlier wasn't a problem. My sister's kids also do dinner with their dad's family.) Slightly troubled, but mostly un-phased by the cancellation, my sister decided to cut up the ham she had and make it into sandwich meat, since it was no longer needed for our Thanksgiving meal.

My dad, on the other hand, told me on Wednesday that my mom is just being silly and don't pay any attention to her, come eat on Thursday. As a matter of fact, come on Wednesday, he said- we could help assemble a new shed they bought, and not drive on the holiday when people were likely drinking. I convinced him that people shouldn't be drinking before lunch, and told him I'd call back and talk to mom. Mood: confused, doubtful.

I tried to call my sister to see if the un-invitation was officially revoked by "the momma" but got no answer. She was out purchasing a storage shed with my mom. They apparently did not get the memo that shopping is to take place the day after Thanksgiving, not the day before. (What can I say, it seems we do a lot of holiday stuff funny...)

On Thursday morning, after sleeping in far longer than I should have, I called my parents' house figuring that my sister would be there. My dad answered and said that in fact, my sisters said they were making the Thanksgiving meal and bringing it to parents' house, but they weren't there yet. Okay, I said, let's go have Thanksgiving...

On a side note, I would like to add that at this point, it was confirmed that my dad has the super power of "detect BS" which in most cases nullifies the effects the "cancel national holidays" power. It's a delicate balance of power in our family.

We leave at about 12 or 12:30, show up and the only thing fully edible is the green salad. Since Thanksgiving had been canceled, they shopped for sheds instead of groceries. There was no butter for the baked potatoes, no mayonnaise for the potato salad, and the turkey (this is a new experiment they were trying, since the ham had been sliced up... we have never had turkey) had just recently been put in the oven.

Icing on the proverbial cake: shortly after arriving, I get a call from my sister who says that she forgot to stuff the turkey, can I make the stuffing and try to stuff it in the mostly-cooked turkey before they arrived? I did, of course, it was that or face being drafted into the shed-assembly corps. (Not surprisingly, I had already been tapped to make their downstairs TV work again. It was just unplugged- it needed a power strip because they use their stereo all the time, and without their plug-in rabbit ears, plugging the TV in would be useless. Shortly afterward, Charles was tapped to make the reception better by playing with the antenna while I made stuffing.)

So, at about 2pm my sisters arrive with 2/3 children, 0/1 grandchildren, 0/1 husbands, mayo, butter, and KFC- in case the turkey wasn't any good, they said. Remember, we have never had turkey. As such, no one knows quite how to slice it up. My husband Charles, whose family eats turkey regularly on holidays, didn't offer any wisdom other than we had the wrong fork. I suggested an emergency call to his parents, but by that time my sister had managed to get enough meat to serve. We figured out what we were doing wrong only after we were all stuffed.

I brought up the subject of Christmas while we ate our last-minute Thanksgiving lunch. After much discussion, the plan is this:

December 24th- We've always celebrated on the 24th, the idea being that you have dinner, stay up, spend time together, and open your presents at midnight. But first I was young, then sister's kids were young, and now parents are old, and no one wants to wait until midnight, so gift opening normally starts at about 9pm. Our plan this year: We leave ultra-early from parents house, go to Disneyland for the day, stay until closing (9pm), drive home to parents' house.

December 25th- We normally don't do anything on the 25th, except go to church. It's kind of anti-climactic, the whole holiday season and gift buying and such, only to not have any plans on Christmas. Luckily, this frees me up to eat dinner with my husband's family without skipping mine, so I don't complain. This year, however, we will do presents (a $20 gift exchange) in the morning like "normal" people. Except without a tree.

We have done a gift exchange at Christmas several times, depending on the general financial situation. I remember when I first became old enough to be part of the gift exchange... True, my mom financed the purchase of the gift for the person whose name I drew, but the new thing was that I only got one present. I was the baby of the family, 15 years younger than my sisters, so this was a new thing to me. My sister's 3 kids, however, still received something from everyone even on gift exchange years.  This year, they became old enough (14, 15, 16) to do the gift exchange, and only the baby is getting multiple presents. Michael was quiet as always, but Carynna was resistant to change. Don't blame her. ;)

As a sort of compromise with Carynna and the other traditional-Christmas sympathizers, we will put a ham in the oven while we open presents in the morning and eat it for lunch.

We left Thanksgiving lunch at about 4pm and went to Thanksgiving dinner at Charles's parents' house. In contrast, they had two turkeys and meatloaf (also something my family has never done, the first time I ate meatloaf I was a junior in high school). There were a lot more "fixings" and such, things that normally come when you know in advance that you're having a big holiday. Much different! Also, no one at my in-laws' house has to "plan" Christmas. Christmas just is, and people will come, and there will be food. None of those are a given at my parents' house. Very strange contrast...

Yay for wirelessness!

Charles made my onboard wireless card work tonight. Yay! Now we're sitting on the bed next to each other IMing each other on our laptops, I had a feeling this would happen one day long before we got married. =P

Uploaded new pictures

I have some new pictures on my Yahoo pictures, particularly in the folder "2006 Sea World 2."

Here, for example, is Charles touching a dolphin.

I'm actually going to be deleting some pictures to thin it out in the next couple of minutes, but you didn't hear me say that. ;)

Paying my parents back- $500 down, unknown amount to go

I got a $500 money order for my parents today, which I’ll give to them at Thanksgiving. I need to figure out exactly how much I owe my parents. The number can be one of many, since there isn’t a clear distinction how much of my school-related stuff I’m expected to pay them back for.

Paid: Dryer
Gift: Washer and Fridge
Unpaid: $600 loan for car repair (Mom said she’d rather loan us the money than sell us her Camry, because it uses less gas than the Tahoe, but she still doesn’t drive it)
Unpaid: School expenses ($5,000 or so roughly, but Mom’s mumbled noises that she was “helping” me get through school and wasn’t expecting repayment)
Unpaid: $400 or $500 (having trouble remembering now) for a flat-screen television at a day-after-Thanksgiving sale two years ago
Paid: Miscellaneous loans, such as meals or bills that arrived to her house that she paid for me. I’ve done a good job of keeping up on those

So that makes $1,000-$6,000, a big range but I think it’s on the lower end.

I <3 George Foreman Grill

I purchased a George Foreman Grill the other day- it was an impulse buy, it was located in the area where I was in line to pick up my laptop that had gotten cleaned out (on warranty) because the fan wasn't working. I like it. I've mostly made grilled cheese sandwiches with it, but I will be branching out to other grill recipies in time. Probably starting with hot dogs. Yummm, hot dogs without frying in grease. Go George Foreman!

Ice cream scooping devices

I would just like to point out that although they're the same price on the website, when I went to the store I found that

this black ice cream scooping device is $5 more than

this red one, which is $5 more than

this stainless steel one.

Note that only the cheapest one has an intergrated ice-cream un-scooping device. Kind of makes you wonder, you know. The store price is labeled with a hand-fired label gun with no bar code...

Using my PDA more

When I first bought my PDA, it was a gift to myself to celebrate my promotion to assistant manager at my work. Being that I worked at a swimming pool and 3/4 of the people who worked under me were dripping wet 3/4 of their workday, I also purchased a BodyGlove wetsuit case to go with it. It was great, because it was not only water resistant but shock absorbing. However, it muffled the sound of a speaker in the PDA in the zipped-up case in my purse under my desk. (Except for when I pulled it out to use it, of course.) So I only saw it when I had business with it, and alarms were pretty useless to me.

Now that I’m not working, and not in a wet environment 40 hours each week, I’ve had my eye on a PDA case that would make it more accessible. I bought this style this week at CompUSA. I’m loving it- it’s smaller than my old case and replaces both the old case and my wallet. And, I have to look at my PDA every time I make a purchase. So, I’ve deleted several applications I don’t need, cleaned up the categories so they’re more intuitive, and even downloaded some free eBooks to read.

At first, I thought that reading books on your PDA would be silly, but it’s actually quite good, because a good book never fits in your purse, and you never know when you’ll have a spare 10 minutes in your life when you’re waiting for something… I’m half way through reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz already!

Now I’ll actually start using the tasks, address book, calendar, memos, and other nifty PDA features that I used to use only for work-related purposes before. This is a big step for me!


Yay for wallet cases!

See more progress on: Get organized

So, about my ice cream...

The top corner of the freezer isn't sealing properly, or at all really. That's why the ice cream has melted. I've resolved that we shall eat as much of the freezer food as possible in the next few days, and I shall call someone to come fix it. Or, alternately, I can get one of those latch things, like a lock or a child lock, and that would make it seal. Hmmm.

Hey, on the bright side of spending too much yesterday...

I found a coupon for 20% off at Bed, Bath and Beyond. I suppose that'll pay for the gas back there again and some of my time. =P Luckily I have another errand to run in that area as well.

My ice cream's melted

...it makes me sad. =( I turned up the dial, the fridge and freezer are controlled by the same dial. I think that it's because there are a lot of water bottles and stuff in the fridge. Maybe it'll be edible in a few hours, or for tomorrow I suppose, but it'll probably taste funny. I bet it'll be all separated and the heavier parts will settle and stuff...

I spend too much money, it's official

So, today I went to pick up the car, which has been in the shop since September 2nd. For those of you who keep track of such things, that's 74 days. In addition to the repairs, the insurance company also paid $30 for each of those days that were "storage." (Presumably, before they approved the cost and not during the actual repair period, although I wouldn't be surprised nowadays.) That was a whole ordeal unto itself... After renting a car to get there during their business hours, I get there and the receptionist tells me that it's not ready. I inform her that she's mistaken, because my husband and I both spoke to the guy in charge of our car yesterday. She tells me that all of them are in a meeting, have a seat and she'll let me know when they're back. Of course, Charles calls them and asks for the repair guy, and he's sitting near his phone. He says go out to the body shop. So I go to the service area where you check cars in and out, they direct me how to get there, and the lady that's there tells me that it's still up on the rack but okay, they can get it. It hasn't been washed yet, I tell her I can wait. So she pulls the file on it, and it says to collect about $400 more than what I'm prepared to give her. Apparently, they had additional damage approved by an adjuster who went out to re-examine the car, but I haven't received that check yet. Want to know why? Becuse it hasn't been sent. Anyway, that was an interesting adventure. In the end, I got the car back because our insurance company faxed over a copy of the check and talked to someone who knows stuff at Ford. I start it up, and the low fuel light comes on. I actually haven't asked my husband yet, but being that his accident was when he was about to get onto the freeway, I have to assume that there was gas in the car when he took it to the shop... Anyhow, luckily there was a gas station across the street. Anyhow, car's back. After picking up the car, I went to Enterprise Rent-A-Car next door to return the car that I had rented to go to the place that had our car. Well, he tells me that in NoHo they put a $300 hold on my bank card, rather than the traditional $300 charge and then a refund for the un-used portion. That would actually have worked better. However, since they had put a hold on it and I had paid for gas and the car repair on my bank card, when the guy tried to charge me the $118 that the rental ended up costing, it was declined. I didn't think much of it, actually I thought that it was probably deemed out of my norm to pay the same car rental place twice on the same day for different amounts, and one of them in a city I've never spent money in (except for at the dealership). So I asked him to try my Capital One card, which I made a payment toward this morning but if that payment hadn't gone through I would not have had enough available credit for that transaction. Well, it went through. I then drove home, went to have lunch, and then went to the Burbank mall, where I planned to make a $64 purchase at Bed Bath and Beyond. My bank card got accepted at the restaurant, but declined at BB&B. Strange, I thought, I just used it... So I said oh well, put it on my other card. That also got declined. (So either they let me over-draw it at the car rental place, or they didn't let me use available credit at the store, depending on what time they processed my payment.) So I call the bank, figuring the Capital One card a lost cause since either of the two options I mentioned wouldn't be a plus for me making my purchase. The first phone banker person says maybe my magstrip isn't working right, there's no reason why it wouldn't have gone through. She transfers me to the ATM department people, and that phone banker says that Enterprise put a 2k+ hold on my account, and that's why it won't work. That puts me over my limit for the day. However, this banker claims that there's a $500 ATM/debit limit and a $3,000 credit limit, and that I'm over one but not the other. He says run it as credit, it should work. Upon thinking about it further now, I realize that the exact amount he told me Enterprise put on hold is the amount that I spent at the Ford dealership. Unless there's a really improbable coincidence here, whereby Enterprise decided they needed a security hold 8 times more than they normally charged and it was the same amount it took to fix the car, he must have skipped a line when reading it. If Enterprise did in fact put a hold of $300 as they verbally told me (or $250 as it says on my slip) and Ford charged me the $2k+, then I'm still under the $3k daily limit he quoted me. So I go back in the store, go back to the same line I was in, but another register opens up and they move me there. So I explain to the new cashier what happened and that I just spoke to the bank and she said to run it as credit (it automatically runs as debit unless they tell it otherwise). It declines again. So I call the bank again. This new person tells me that I've exceeded my limit for the day, period. I ask if there's anything I can do to make this purchase and he says I can write a check. (Lot of good that does me, if I don't carry cash because I've gone to plastic-money-mode, you think I carry checks?) I go the restroom at the mall, then on the way back toward the exit, I ask someone if there's an ATM. I'd call the bank and ask them if it should work, except I don't have reception inside. So I'm directed to the one ATM in the mall, inside the arcade. I get there, and it's dead. I've convinced myself it wouldn't have worked anyway, sour grapes ya'know? Good thing I wasn't at a fancy restaurant after I ate, or stranded on the highway trying to get roadside assistance. (Maybe this is why women typically go shopping in packs? I'd bring my husband along the next time I want to spend more than $3,000 in one day, but someone has to make the money so I can spend it!) We had in the bank (after two tanks of gas, lunch, the car rental, and the car repair) twice as much as what we pay for rent, and there was no way to access it until 12:01am. I was pretty determined at that point to get the items I was trying to buy, but I think they would have kicked me out of the store before then. So there you have it, my grand waste of several hours of my day, all because I spend too much money... And I still haven't figured out how they claim I spent $3k... *starts counting on fingers*

Sea World, again

My husband and I went to Sea World this weekend. We were actually going to go to Magic Mountain (a decision we made at about noon on Saturday) but the hotel we normally stay at was booked up for the night, so we set our sights further south. For a couple of dollars extra, you can get a "fun card" instead of a regular ticket, and you can come back again until the end of 2006 (same as Magic Mountain). I already had a fun card from when I went with parents and sister last Tuesday. So, we went on Saturday, got there at about 4 or so I think, after picking up one of my parents' cars since our Focus is still in the shop and our Explorer has no stereo (and it's a more bumpy ride than in mom's Camry). We saw a lot of stuff, then went to a hotel and came back the next morning. We left kind of early, about 3:15pm. It was probably better though, since we did run into quite a bit of traffic. There were three accidents we drove past (one on the opposite side and two on our side) that all looked pretty nasty. I'd post pictures, but my computer is being repaired (the fan went dead) and my husband's computer doesn't auto-magically recognize the camera with a USB cable. I think our card reader is in his backpack, which he took to work, so I can't use that. I'll have to wait until he comes home. Never would have guessed I'd be going to Sea World 3 times in one week! I love living in Southern California. =)

Sea World Pictures

I wanted to share some pictures from Sea World while I'm checking my email. (I've been resting most of the day, very tired from the trip.) I made this mosaic using Flickr. I like Flickr for the most part, although its interface is clunky and the upload limit is a pain- I can upload all the pictures I like at too low a resolution to do anything with them, or upload only 11 today and have to wait until December 1st to upload any more. Yahoo pictures, on the other hand, is a nicer interface and no upload or storage limits, but you can't link there because the filenames change. Pffft. So, I made the mosaic but I can't upload it to Flickr, I've put it on my website space instead. The rest of the pictures can be viewed at my Yahoo pictures site, as usual.

Quick update

I wanted to post a quick update before I leave to El Monte this evening. My sister and I and our parents will be going to Sea World tomorrow, staying in a hotel in San Diego, and then going to my sister's doctor's appointment (which is conveniently close to Sea World) first thing Wednesday morning. Fun stuff, huh? I'm going along because everyone else doesn't like to drive on the freeway. =) I've done some more work on my genealogy, getting some documentiation going, in fact I started a new blog dedicated just to genealogy stuff mostly for my own benefit (although you're welcome to read it if you're so inclined). It's more my style than a pen-and-paper research log. You can find it at my Yahoo 360 page. I've gotten some really promising leads from the FamilySearch website lately. Some are still in my research database because there's nothing linking them to my live database other than name and location. However, some have moved to my live database. For example, there is someone in their database with my paternal grandmother's name (Maria Luisa Echeverria, not a too-common name) born in Guadalajara 2 years after my grandfather was born and deceased 3 years before his second marriage. It wouldn't be good enough if I was trying to write a book, but name, location, and two dates related to other dates is enough to be reasonably sure in my mind that this is the person I'm looking for. Putting her into my live database gives me her birth and death dates and her mother's name. People still in my research database include four possible great-great-grandparents and four possible great-great-great grandparents (all four of my maternal grandmother's grandparents and her paternal great-grandparents). I'm not quite ready to make those connections yet, though. On my genealogical to-do list is to figure out how to request vital documents from several states in Mexico, because I'm running out of deceased American residents pretty quickly! Latest stats: Individuals ---------------------------- Number of individuals: 203 Males: 102 Females: 101 Individuals with incomplete names: 19 Individuals missing birth dates: 142 Disconnected individuals: 6 Family Information ---------------------------- Number of families: 62 Unique surnames: 48 Media Objects ---------------------------- Individuals with media objects: 73 Total number of media object references: 112 Number of unique media objects: 111

Parents' Paperwork

I stayed at my parents house last night after the get-together I had with some good friends. I was able to get from them their birth certificates and marriage certificate. I photographed them with my HP Photosmart R707 camera, and I must say that the images came out great in document mode. Much better than carrying a scanner around for my laptop! (Especially great because my laptop has a built-in SD card reader, so I can skip the cables too.)

Some things I got from this documentation:

1. My mom has two birth certificates which state they were filed the same day, but have different call numbers. She had copies of both, which she had requested at seperate times within the past 5 years.
2. First confirmation of grandparents names in writing (in addition to, of course, personal knowledge from my parents).
3. My mom's two birth certificates contradict each other in two things. Firstly, whether or not her maternal grandmother (my great-grandmother) is alive at the time of her birth. One lists both as "finado" and one lists only the maternal grandfather as such (I suppose that I should confirm my primitive translation of this to mean deceased).
4. The second thing that contradicts is my grandfather's age at the time of my mom's birth. I don't have a written record with a birth year for him, and his age at either 24 or 25 still gives me two very good alternatives, both of them in writing. Blasted secondary sources! I'll keep working on this.
5. My dad was not born in Mexico City as they wrote in my baby book, but actually in Guadalajara. I hadn't thought to ask him, my bad! (Secondary sources, again! Unless his birth certificate is wrong as at least one of my mom's is...)
6. The great thing about being Hispanic is that people use their mother's maiden names. My paternal grandmother is listed with both parents' last names names on my dad's birth certificate. The surname of her mother's family is a new find.
7. My paternal grandfather is listed with the same last name twice (as opposed to a father's last name then mother's maiden name). Need to follow up on this, may be a sign that either his father was not "in the picture" or there was inter-marriage of relatives.

By the way, I wouldn't trust a Mexican birth certificate older than, say, the mid 1980's. They were not created at birth, but rather "registered" after the fact. This can make it easy for people to register other people's children or alter other facts. (Both of my mom's birth certificates, by the way, state her birth date and registration date of her birth to be December 20th, when in fact she was born on the 18th and registered on the 20th.)

Happy Birthday Billy (well, not today, but...)

I spent a good portion of yesterday with my friends I've known since high school. It was a lot of fun, good times. Now I must hunt down the person with the camera so I can show you! I slept at mom's house because it was quite late when we were done (honestly, I would have done it even if it were still early, cuz I had business with mom). I did some genealogy research at her house, finding documentation to things I "mostly" knew already. (Meaning I knew most of it, and mostly knew all of it, but it's not official unless it's in writing anyway!) I burned CDs with pictures for her and each of my sisters, so they can make prints at WalMart/Target/etc. We watched a slideshow on my laptop, they loved it. Dad even asked how much the laptop cost, I think he may have been thinking of entering the computer age, but he probably won't. That's okay. =) Future project: We have dvd burning capabilities, my parents have no computer capabilities. 2+2="I need to learn how to make dvd slideshows." (Sisters have computers. However, one sister's computer is a Win98 machine whose hardware has past its prime, and the other's is a computer that once surpassed the machine that's now our server but is now laden with spyware and useless programs.) Dad was getting bored of other people's children on the computer slideshow, so our photo dvds have to have menus so he can navigate to what he wants to see or he needs to be able to click through them quickly. "Chapters" of related pictures on a timed cycle could work well.

Cemetery trip

Information came to me in passing (when we buried a family member) that my grandfather was buried at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier California. Of course, in the few times I've gone with family no one wanted to spend more time there than they "had to" (like hanging out at the cemetery is weird or something!), and the times I've gone alone have been in brief snippets of time I've found when I'm in the area.



Well, now that I'm living in Los Angeles county again, almost 10 months after I first heard about it, I finally went to visit my grandfather and his second wife (who had the courage to marry a widower with 8 children). They are buried next to each other in the Garden of Affection area.



I've identified the image on her grave marker as being the LDS Temple in Salt Lake City.

Click for images: (Detail on the marker, 1999) (Likely original image from a post card)



There is similarly an image on his, which I believe to be the LDS Temple in Los Angeles. However there appear to be one or more auxiliary structures not in the modern photograph, to the right of the temple and to the left of the entrance archway. I will be looking online at images of other temples that he may have been familiar with to rule out similar architecture.

Click for image: (Detail on the marker, 1980) (Not an exact match, but a very good one)



More on my adventures soon.

Current stats on genealogy program

So, this is my genealogy database as of today. I've been doing a lot of media work, as you can see. 68 people have 103 references to 98 pictures. =) Individuals ---------------------------- Number of individuals: 193 Males: 98 Females: 95 Individuals with incomplete names: 16 Individuals missing birth dates: 131 Disconnected individuals: 4 Family Information ---------------------------- Number of families: 57 Unique surnames: 47 Media Objects ---------------------------- Individuals with media objects: 68 Total number of media object references: 103 Number of unique media objects: 98

Requested Cutting Edge Documentation

I emailed a request for this today.